


everything looks perfect from far away

by orphan_account



Series: Hijacking the Soft Wars AU [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, But he still has Alpha, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, Rex misses his brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26624905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rex may not live in the CC dorms anymore, but he’s still 17’s.
Relationships: Alpha-17 & CT-7567 | Rex
Series: Hijacking the Soft Wars AU [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725256
Comments: 27
Kudos: 220
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	everything looks perfect from far away

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pedestal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26613151) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



> A very special thanks to [CmonCmon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmonCmon/works) my beta on this fic and an extremely talented writer. Of course, I can't leave well enough alone so any mistakes are mine!
> 
> Also, huge thanks, as always, to Projie, for letting us play in her AU
> 
> Title from Such Great Heights by The Postal Service

The Littles get littler every year. And every year it gets a little harder to think about handing them a fresh set of Whites and sending them off to join the fight. 

They stare up at him as he walks by, awestruck. They forget they are in training, that their place is in line, eyes front. Not curious, not wondering, not _little_. 

It makes 17 feel old, in a way he never thought he’d get the chance to. And tired, in a way he doesn’t notice anymore. 

It’s part of why he doesn’t come to this part of Tipoca City very often.

The Littles are too little, their eyes too big. 

17 doesn't think he was ever that young.

He stops in front of a door, identical to the dozens that extend in both directions on either side of the corridor. 

He knocks, but isn’t expecting an answer. 

CTs have more downtime than CCs, though it’s still not enough for the types of things Alpha privately thinks they should be allowed to have. Things he knows they would have, if they were natborns and not what they are (children have toys, cadets have weapons. Children play, cadets train). If the CTs are not training they’ll be in the mess, or out on the east dock where the surveillance cameras don’t work. 

Those cameras have been broken as long as 17 can remember. Ever since he was a cadet sneaking out with 23 to brave the wind and rain to dare each other to jump into the churning water, then huddle together in an alcove and watch the storms when neither of them did. He isn’t sure which vod keeps moving the repair order to the bottom of the pile, but it feels like something 99 would do. 

He isn’t expecting an answer, but he also isn't surprised when he gets one. 

The door slides open and 17 is taken aback (he doesn’t react, he is an _alpha_ ) to be looking into a set of brown eyes instead of open air over a buzzed blonde head. 

“You grew.” 

Rex blinks at him once and then, deciding not to dignify such an obvious observation with a response, turns away. Alpha follows him inside. 

“Where is everyone?” 17 asks, glancing around the empty room. It’s larger than the CC dorms, but not as wide or tall as the main barracks, housing triple high bunkbeds instead of tubes. 17 is not ashamed of the swell of pride he feels that his CT was chosen, _recognized_ as elite, before even graduating. 

“Training Sims. I’m done already.”

He turns back to Rex and finds he has folded his formerly gangly arms and legs, now proportional, prepared for the mass they were already starting to carry, into a protective ball on his bunk. He’s giving a data pad a dark look 17 recognizes after so many years on the receiving end of it. 

Rex has never appreciated being left behind. 17 included him in as many trainings as he could get away with above board, Cody snuck him into even more below it. But there had always been certain things he couldn’t be a part of. 

When it was one of those times, Rex would glare at 17 the way he was glaring now. Like it was 17s choice to exclude him.

As if he truly believed 17 wouldn’t give him anything if he thought it was safe to do so. 

“Sulking?” 17 asks, because he’s never been one to pull punches and Rex is fully aware he sulks. Wields it like a weapon that Alpha will never admit actually works. 

“No,” Rex snaps. Shields up, defensive positions. All Wolffe. Then throws himself back on the bed and folds his hands on his stomach, leg crosses at the ankles, unconcerned, in control. All Bly. 

17’s heart twists painfully, but he reminds himself he was always going to have to let them go someday. 

“That’s what Cody called it.” Alpha leans against the wall. He can’t see Rex’s face from here, but he watches the way Rex’s fingers drum an agitated rhythm against his stomach before he forces himself to stop and hold still, only for the pressure to build up over the ensuing seconds and release through his fingertips again like an emergency pressure valve on Mustafar. 

“Well Cody’s not here.” Rex says. Angry. Scared. “In case you haven’t noticed.” 

It’s hard to be the one left behind. The one waiting for updates. The one sitting still when everyone else is moving. 17 knows. Has suffered through it since he last set foot on Kamino. 

17 also knows it’s hard to be the one to walk away, to get on a ship and leave when there’s a chance you won’t come back.17 knows most of the time you don’t even get to say ‘goodbye’. 

Rex doesn’t know those things. 17 worries for the day he will. 

“You’ve heard from them?” 

A nod. Rex kicks the data pad with his boot. “They’re all okay. Geonosis sounds like it was a karking disaster though.” 

17’s response is an afterthought, more growl than word. Because the space after Rex swearing has always been filled by protesting brothers and it feels wrong to let the silence hang. 

He reaches out to scruff his hair. 

“Language, Rex’ika.” 

He doesn’t miss the way Rex’s shoulders unhitch and he tries not to smile. Doesn’t say Rex shouldn’t crave familiarity so badly, so loudly, when everything he knows could be ripped away at any moment. 

Rex has already learned that lesson. And 17 never saw much point in beating a lesson into a cadets head (he isn’t, will never be, like Priest). 

He drops onto the nearest bunk so he can get clear sight-lines to Rex’s eyes. 

“How are classes?” 

Rex shrugs. “Fine. Battle Strategy courses are interesting. Endurance Training blows.” 

17’s shoulders go tight. “Reau?” 

Rex snorts. “No, thank the little gods. I like my legs just where they are. B’arin Apma.” 

"Ah." 17 relaxes again and nods. He knows Apma some. He’s tough, but fair. Certainly a far cry more sane a trainer than some Priest disciple like Issy Reau. 

“Brotherhood. Stamina. Loyalty.” Rex says, in an unflattering imitation of what 17 can only assume is supposed to be Apma. “I’m spouting that osik in my sleep now. Like it’s not enough I’ve got to run twenty kilks in under an hour in full kit _and_ the karking rain.” 

17 taps twice on his bracer. “ _Kot_.” 

Rex stops, mid rant, and frowns at him. “What?” 

“It’s a prayer. To the bit of the Force that's fine with shooting assholes.” He says, as if that will explain anything and actually does the opposite. 

Rex has grown up with the Shebse though. He takes it in stride.

“Okay.” He drops his head back against the wall, promptly returning to sulking. “Then, what are you doing here 17? Checking up on me?” 

17 stretches his leg, gives in and massages the muscles in his thigh that protest long bouts of standing, instead of answering right away. 32 was a hell of a medic but he’d warned 17 chronic muscle pain might be the price he had to pay to keep his leg. 17 only regrets his choice occasionally. Like when he decides to drag himself all the way over to the CT barracks from Usk tower to check up on the Shebse's semi-feral CT.

It had been worth it though. He’d wanted to see that the kid was doing alright on his own, to sort fact from fiction of the rumors he’d heard about the dangerously independent CT who trained hard and rarely left his dorm. And now that he knows the rumors are true, that Rex _is_ struggling, he's got to figure out how he's going to fix it.

Preferably without the stubborn little ankle biter realizing what he's up to. The kid has worked too hard for his independence, put too much effort into the pretense that he doesn’t need to be babied and doesn’t enjoy it when his brothers do it, to accept that 17 might be worried about him. 

17 is worried. He worries about all of them, all the time.

But that isn’t the point. And not something Rex needs to know.

“No,” 17 says finally. He’s passed larger lies on more perceptive audiences, but he still hopes Rex doesn’t call him on it. “Came to get you for a spar.” 

Rex’s eyebrows shoot up.

Alphas spar with each other. No one else can keep up, can stand from their relentless put downs and be bruised instead of broken. No one would choose to spar an Alpha except another Alpha. 

No one but a plucky little CT that doesn’t know how not to want more than what he’d been designed to have.

“Really?” Rex asks, gleeful, already half off the bed. Enthusiastic at the prospect, as if he isn’t risking death at the very idea. Trusts 17 with all the leap-then-look self-preservation instinct of a pursued Nuna. All Ponds. 

17 shrugs. 

“If you think you can take it.” 

Rex’s nose wrinkles in offense. “I can put Cody and Ponds down as often as they can me. And Bly stopped sparring with me he got so tired of getting his shebse handed to him. And Wolffe doesn’t count. He bites. That’s cheating.” 

17 raises an unimpressed eyebrow. Rex’s indignant mask slips and the mischievous, chaotic cadet 17 knows no one else will ever believe exists shows through. 

“I mean. It’s cheating if you don’t bite back.” 

The sound that erupts from 17 as he stands says he knows exactly who is usually the instigator of biting between the two of them. And he isn’t surprised at the squawk that cries of undeserved persecution that follows him to the door. 

“Loopholes are for politicians. I raised you better than that.” 

“Cody raised me.” Rex shoots back, not missing a beat. 17 whips to face him, realizing too late that he was baited and has to suffer through Rex’s knowing smirk, bland and amiable and entirely too self satisfied. All Cody.

“You will not bite me,” 17 informs him, instead of admitting defeat, “or you will spend the rest of your life without teeth.” 

Rex beams over at him, over, not up, and 17 did _not_ okay this. He leans in to bump their shoulders together. Rex presses back. Comfortable in his own skin, confident in his own abilities and always, always ready for a challenge. 

All Rex.

And, he thinks as they enter the PT wing, when something wild flashes in Rex’s eyes, teeth white and sharp and on display, a little bit of 17 too.

He gives Rex a gentle shove into the gym ahead of him and the cadet makes a show of rolling with it, stripping off his top and getting into position on the mat. 17 thinks of the helmet stowed away under his bunk, bright white except for the jaig eyes painted above the visor. 

Thinks about how that helmet fits Rex now. How it won’t be shiny and unscratched much longer. 

He joins Rex on the mat in the middle of the room.

The Littles get littler every year. And they still grow up too fast.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! 
> 
> _Kot_ is explained in [the very first](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23407009) Soft Wars AU fic, the one that started it all.
> 
> The jaig eyes were given to Rex by the Shebse in Part 3 of this series entitled 'High, High, Hopes'.


End file.
